New York City

Although I live in New Hampshire, I have not spent my entire life here. I was actually born in Manhattan, but because of my dad's job, my family moved to New Hampshire when I was three years old. So honestly, I don't really remember living in the city. But I think I sound tougher when I tell my friends that I'm originally from NYC…I usually exclude the fact that I moved when I was only a toddler and was barely old enough to even eat a slice of pizza. However, I do visit fairly often and I have family in New York, so I have a pretty decent sense of what life is like in the city, and I love it there. Thus, early Saturday morning I found myself on another excursion off campus to NYC!

The humanities program, along with the Multicultural Center, ran a bus-trip to the city that departed campus at 6:00 a.m. and left NYC at 7:00 p.m.. I had pulled together a group of my friends to join me for this adventure, and I was especially excited because most of them had never been to NYC, or had gone when they were too young to remember.

Our day started at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art at about 11:30, and after that we worked our way through the city in attempts to hit as many major landmarks as possible in the limited amount of time that we had. Following the museum, we journeyed on to Central Park, where we managed to get lost an inordinate amount of times…we ended up walking the same stretch of the park back and forth three times before we finally got back on track. We brushed this first mishap away like it was nothing and carried on towards the Plaza Hotel. In the Plaza we pretended we were elite guests, up until the point when one of the security guards asked us for proof of our room key and we had to admit our true identities.

After leaving the Plaza we hit up 5th Ave (where we made a small scene when we pretended to have seen Kanye West), and then reached Time Square. At this point we were very tired from walking and decided that it was appropriate to reward ourselves with a late lunch. So we stopped for pizza at John's Pizza…honestly the world's best pizza you will EVER eat. I have held to this fact since the age of three when I was able to first comprehend the sentence from my family.

Seeing my friends (who had never been to NYC before) in Time Square was like watching a little kid eat ice-cream for the first time. They initially seemed a little overwhelmed and alarmed, but in near miliseconds these emotions turned to complete eagerness. We walked around the bustling epicenter of the city for a while, practiced haggling with some of the street vendors, and took pictures with a crazy number of people dressed up as Disney and cartoon characters. In fact, there were so many people dressed up as action figures that I heard a little boy ask his mom, "Mommy, why are there so many cars in Disney World?" I couldn't have agreed with him more.

We wrapped our day up with a trip to Magnolia's Bakery for a piece of carrot cake and we stopped by Rockefeller Center. Then we made our way to Saint Patrick's Cathedral where the buses were picking us up. The five hour trip went by very fast, seeing as how we were all beyond exhausted. But honestly, I was so happy that we decided to go. My friends and I had so much fun and it was awesome being able to be with some of them for their first trip to NYC. My friend, Jackie, is already planning a return trip before Christmas time!

Bridget Sica ’16 is an English major from Laconia, New Hampshire. Bridget is an active member of the Meelia Center for Community Engagement and has participated in Campus Ministry sponsored trips. It would not be hard to find Bridget on campus – she is often on the sidelines at athletic competitions, cheering on the Hawks.